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Purple ink?
Guess DeLay got to vote 10 times ...
"Now Ronnie Earle has the mug shot he wanted," said DeLay lawyer Dick DeGuerin, referring to the Travis County district attorney who sought the indictments. "I wanted to avoid the circus. . . . He wanted a perp walk, and we did not want to do it."
Video grab of former House Majority leader Tom DeLay's lawyer Dick DeGuerin holding Delay's booking sheet outside of the Harris County sherrif's office in Houston October 20, 2005. NBC/Reuters
DeLay wants new judge, new trial location
Citing partisan differences, U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, wants a new judge to hear his conspiracy and money-laundering charges somewhere other than Travis County. DeLay's lawyer on Thursday asked state District Judge Bob Perkins, a Democrat, to remove himself from the case because of donations the judge made to the Democratic Party, its candidates and the political organization, Moveon.org.
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By challenging the judge's impartiality,
lawyer Dick DeGuerin
is taking a page from his playbook a dozen years ago when Perkins removed himself from a trial of U.S. Sen.
Kay Bailey Hutchison because the judge gave money to her Senate opponent. DeGuerin also got that trial on charges of official misconduct moved to Fort Worth where he won an acquittal in an abbreviated trial.
"It's been non-stop," said D'Ann Underwood, Perkins' judicial aide, of the national media's focus on the DeLay case. During her 26 years, Underwood has seen other notable politicians come before the judge -- Texas Speaker Gib Lewis and Hutchison to name two. "But it wasn't ever like this," she said.
DeLay sidestepped news reporters awaiting his booking in Austin or his home county by quietly being fingerprinted, photographed and released on $10,000 bail at a Houston jail, instead. The whole affair took about 30 minutes.
"Now Ronnie Earle has the mug shot he wanted," said DeLay lawyer Dick DeGuerin, referring to the Travis County district attorney who sought the indictments. "I wanted to avoid the circus. . . . He wanted a perp walk, and we did not want to do it."
DeLay also doesn't want to be tried in Travis County.
In his filing, DeGuerin cited 34 contributions from Perkins to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, the Travis County Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, and 2002 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez, among others, over the past three years. The donations ranged from $35 to the Texas Democratic Party to $1,000 to the Travis County Democratic Party.
DeGuerin's motion asked Perkins to step aside or, at least, allow Judge B.B. Schraub, the presiding judge of the 3rd Administrative Judicial Region, to decide whether Perkins should preside. Schraub, a Seguin Republican, was re-appointed to the administrative post by Gov. Rick Perry in 2002.
Travis County jurors also would be hostile to DeLay, DeGuerin argued. He said the "seemingly interminable" investigation of DeLay by Earle, a Democrat, has generated "massive and unrelenting media coverage" in Travis County, "one of the last enclaves of the Democratic Party in Texas."
DeGuerin said DeLay is a controversial politician whose efforts to split Travis County into three congressional districts in 2003 remains highly unpopular locally. The filing included more than 40 affidavits by local residents saying DeLay could not get a fair trial locally.
Also, on Thursday DeLay's legal team filed a brief arguing that the state conspiracy statute does not apply to the election code or to money-laundering and the indictments should be thrown out. He also wrote that DeLay's alleged offense -- laundering $190,000 of corporate money through the Republican National Committee -- occurred more than three years ago. There is a three-year deadline for pursuing a money-laundering charge.
Judge Perkins is not expected to rule on any pre-trial motions today. Instead, he probably will schedule arguments on DeLay's motions next month when he is hearing similar motions from DeLay's co-defendants, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis.
John Colyandro ran Texans for a Republican Majority, a committee DeLay created to help elect Republican state lawmakers who, in turn, would redraw congressional districts. Jim Ellis was DeLay's right-hand fundraiser in Washington and a consultant to the Texas Committee.
State law prohibits spending corporate money on campaigns, but a committee can spend it on administrative overhead.
In the final weeks of the 2002 campaign, Colyandro sent a blank check to Ellis, who had scheduled a meeting with Terry Nelson with the Republican National Committee. He filled in the check for $190,000 -- drawn from corporate funds -- and gave it to Nelson. Two weeks later, an arm of the RNC gave the same amount in political donations to seven Texas legislative candidates.
Bill of Indictment :: The State of Texas vs.
John Dominick Colyandro, James Walter Ellis, & Thomas Dale DeLay
Dick De Guerin's Campagne Contributions
From Democrat pre 1997 to mostly Republican thereafter. One difference with the 1993 trial, Rove may not be on the side of DeLay to provide the spin in the Texas media today.
Media Matters :: Limbaugh parroted DeLay's baseless claim that
Democratic Party leaders conspired with Texas DA to indict DeLay
Lobbyist Accuses Ex-Partner in Fraud
Jack Abramoff says Adam Kidan hid his business failures and disbarment
By Curt Anderson
MIAMI (AP) Sept. 26, 2005 -- Prominent Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and New York businessman Adam Kidan were once good friends who had known each other since their college days in the Washington area. They stayed in touch over the years and became business partners in a 2000 deal to buy a lucrative Florida fleet of gambling boats.
Now, both are charged in a federal grand jury indictment with fraud in connection with their purchase of SunCruz Casinos. And Abramoff says in court documents that he was hoodwinked by Kidan, who Abramoff contends kept secret his past business failures and disbarment as a lawyer.
"Had I known these facts about Kidan, I would never have signed" the SunCruz loan papers central to the federal indictment, Abramoff said in one of thousands of pages of court documents filed in response to a lawsuit brought against Abramoff, Kidan, SunCruz and others by two lenders after the ill-fated purchase.
Kidan never responded to Abramoff's allegations nor did he answer the lawsuit filed by SunCruz financiers Foothill Capital Corp. and Citadel Equity Fund Ltd. A default judgment was entered against Kidan in the case. But the lawsuit was dismissed on Sept. 1 without damages being awarded, shortly after Abramoff and Kidan were indicted.
Kidan's lawyer in the Florida criminal case, Martin Jaffe, said he would not comment on Abramoff's claims. A telephone message left at Kidan's home in New York was not returned.